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Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Musician Introduction: Hotei Tomoyasu

Musician Introduction: HOTEI TOMOYASU布袋 寅泰

Welcome to another Musican Introduction....After doing the last one my plans were to do one on someone who is not from the Rock genre as the past ones have generally been so. Despite this, hasn't turned out that way, and there's a reason for this.

(Following paragraph is me rambling. If you don't give a damn do skip over it)Recently however, I've been thinking of how to make this blog more popular, because I want to show Japanese music fans music that is aren't done by Visual Kei artists or from Anime opening/closings. Although I could write about them as much as I like about other artists, chances are that most people won't bother reading, because reading large amounts of text unfortunately, is quite tedious. What other ways to introduce/expose artists apart from posting songs by them?........"well subbing interviews I suppose"....is what I thought, since theirs heaps of interviews out on the web that aren't subbed, yet fans desperately watch them even if they don't understand. So yeah, Hotei just happened to be the first one I felt like subbing and so I thought I might as well introduce him. (Rambling over)

LEGENDARY GUITARIST: HOTEI TOMOYASU

Many of you would actually probably be familiar with Mr. Hotei, or if not, many would definitely recognise one of his tunes. The song I'm talking about is "Battle Without Honour or Humanity", the theme song for the world famous Tarantino film "Kill Bill".

Know what I'm talking about now? Yeah, he made that.Hotei is a very talented guitarist, so much so that he is of legendary status in Japan, and deservedly so.

Hotei first arrived on the mainstream music scene in the 80's as the lead guitarist of the band Boowy (also of legendary status now). The band's influence on people were was so great that they started a 'Band Boom' era in Japan, a time when scores of kids rushed together to start bands in an effort to emulate/mimmick, this group.

Boowy

Boowy broke up however in 1988, after which Hotei embarked on quite a successful solo career, which has produced 13 original albums to date. Hotei's style of music is generally fast paced, has Rock'n' Roll, Blues and Rockabilly influenced tunes and very catchy guitar riffs. He has experimented around a fair bit though, especially his earlier albums, which has a fair bit of that 80's primitive electronic sound in it. His later works are more listenable though (well suits my tastes better anyway) and has spurned many Meikyoku 名曲 (masterpieces).

A lot of his tunes have made it onto TV shows, which I reckon you might recognise some if you watch a lot of it, especially comedy shows (particularly Mecha Ike and Egashira 2.0). Here's a couple:

THRILL

BEAT EMOTION

Skip to around 40 sec

BAMBINA

Well those were all pretty similar, but as I said before, they are just the ones that I've heard on TV (and probably the same show) so it would make sense to get songs that have similar kind of energy....I suppose

Anyway, he does have some different sounding music, although I have got to say his best songs are often like the ones I've just shown you.

Other songs that I like without writing a huge list are:

-Eien no Hana

-POISON

-RUSSIAN ROULETTE

-Gekkou Pierot

-Velvet Kiss

-Nocturne No. 9

Although I haven't got all of his albums yet, so far I think 'King & Queen' is my favourite.

Thanks for reading this post, I'll present my first subbed video tomorrow sometime, as I've got a my last test for university tomorrow as well, and really should be studying rather than wasting time doing stuff like this...

1 comment:

Oh yes, Hotei-san! I first heard of BOOWY when I was studying in Japan and my classmate lent me on of their albums.BOOWY broke up too soon, but that's why people think of them as a legendary band!I guess I'm one of the minority who likes Hotei and Himuro's solo stuff better than BOOWY stuff XD